Norman Mailer wrote of once having heard or read—he no longer remembered where—this story of Chekhov being summoned to Tolstoy’s country estate. There the great lion of Russian literature praised the younger author’s stories, but lambasted his plays as being “even worse than Shakespeare.” In Mailer’s recounting, Chekhov, once outside, explained his thoughts as follows: “I drove to the train station over snow-covered roads. I whipped the horses. I beseeched them to go faster. Faster! And to the full moon I cried aloud: ‘I am even worse than Shakespeare!’”

Tolstoy objected to what he felt was Shakespeare’s reliance on the unnatural (i.e., characters don’t speak the way people speak, implausible settings, etc.), which meant that Shakespeare could not “produce on the reader that illusion which constitutes the chief condition of art.” In this course we’ll examine the above-mentioned writers with an eye to grappling with their prose and philosophies, especially with regards to love and art. Our material, which will also include Plato and Anatole Broyard, will serve as the grist for your own thinking and writing. Over the term, you will write four revised essays (plus two shorter ones) ranging from literary analysis to an adaptation.

Syllabi are available to current LSA students. IMPORTANT: These syllabi are provided to give students a general idea about the courses, as offered by LSA departments and programs in prior academic terms. The syllabi do not necessarily reflect the assignments, sequence of course materials, and/or course expectations that the faculty and departments/programs have for these same courses in the current and/or future terms.